House of Lords says video game loot boxes are gambling

A new House of Lords report suggests that loot boxes should be classified as ‘games of chance’, which would see them instantly run afoul of the 2005 Gambling Act.

Following the report, the House of Lords is calling for immediate action on loot boxes and gambling in video games.

The controversy surrounding loot boxes, which are prolific in EA and Blizzard's games, has been around for years now.

There are concerns that the gaming mechanism exploits players by creating a system of gambling that is incredibly addictive when in video games.

While the report isn't specifically about video games, it covered the whole gambling spectrum, looking at new forms of gambling and those targeted at children.

Games were targeted in this report, calling for the reclassification of loot boxes. It also references how other countries, such as Belgium and the Netherlands, have already begun regulating them,

In 2017, the UK Gambling Commission stated that loot boxes do not count as gambling, simply because the items you were getting in these games couldn't be traded for actual money.

However, the Lords appears to disagree with this statement. According to the BBC, the Lords report claims: ‘If a product looks like gambling and feels like gambling, it should be regulated as gambling".

‘The government must act immediately to bring loot boxes within the remit of gambling legislation and regulation’, adds a statement from the report.

The Lords report concludes that new regulations classifying loot boxes as gambling, or a least a game of chance, must happen quickly. It also says the same definition should apply to any other in-game item paid for with real money.

Games like EA's FIFA, Blizzard's Overwatch and countless mobile games offer in-game purchases in the form of loot boxes.

These boxes have a pre-determined chance of giving you certain items, usually in ranks of rarity. They range from cosmetics that change your character, weapons and other non-gameplay elements but, from each loot box, you only have a small chance of getting the specific thing you want.

This also extends to games like Apex Legends, but considering the game is free and most of the things can be earned in-game, along with being rewarded with loot boxes for playing, Apex doesn't seem like one of the worst offenders here.